ed would wait no longer, but were about to make what Mr.
Rooney called a forcible entry on a summary process, and eject the
tenant in possession.

[Illustration: 1-0092]

We accordingly rose, and all (save the party around the viceroy) along
with us, once more to visit the ball-room, where already dancing had
begun. While I was eagerly endeavouring to persuade Miss Bellew that
there was no cause or just impediment to prevent her dancing the next
set with me, Lord Dudley de Vere lounged affectedly forward, and mumbled
out some broken indistinct phrases, in which the word da-ance was alone
audible. Miss Bellew coloured slightly, turned her eyes towards me,
curtsied, took his arm, and the next moment was lost amid the crowd.

I am not aware of any readier method of forming a notion of perpetual
motion than watching the performance of Sir Roger de Coverley at an
evening party in Dublin. It seems to be a point of honour never to give
in; and thus the same complicated figures, the same mystic movements
that you see in the beginning, continue to succeed each other in a
never-ending series. You endeavour in vain to detect the plan, to
unravel the tangled web of this strange ceremony; but somehow it
would seem as if the whole thing was completely discretionary with the
dancers, there being only one point of agreement among them, which is,
whenever blown out of breath, to join in a vigorous hands-round; and,
the motion being confined to a shuffling of the feet, and a shaking
of the elbows, little fatigue is incurred. To this succeeds a capering
forward movement of a gentleman, which seemingly magnetises an opposite
lady to a similar exhibition; then, after seizing each other rapturously
by the hands, they separate to run the gauntlet in and out down
the whole line of dancers, to meet at the bottom, when, apparently
reconciled, they once more embrace. What follows, the devil himself may
tell. As for me, I heard only laughing, tittering, now and then a slight
scream, and a cry of 'Behave, Mr. Murphy!' etc.; but the movements
themselves were conic sections to me, and I closed my eyes as I sat
alone in my corner, and courted sleep as a short oblivion to the scene.
Unfortunately I succeeded; for, wild and singular as the gestures, the
looks, and the voices were before, they now became to my dreaming senses
something too terrible. I thought myself in the centre of some hobgoblin
orgie, where demons, male and female, were performing